A journey through CCK09 and PLENK2010

Is networked learning always connectivism?

Connectivism has been described as a situation where people, places and knowledge are connected in a dynamic, networked learning environment where the “connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing” (Siemens 2004, cited in Wikipedia 2010).

As I understand it then, connectivism describes the process by which the learning is done. From George Siemens’ summary of the differences between connectivism and other learning theories (Siemens 2009), connectivism has two properties that make it unique:

the process i.e. in a network, rather than in a single space with a group of students and a teacher

the creation of new learning.

Focussing on this last point, if connectivism involves the creation of new learning, where does knowledge come from? Can we really create our own knowledge from scratch?

In these early stages of the course I’m exploring the connectedness of the CCK09 network and starting to find my way around (creating my own ‘map’ or schema’). My learning process consists of reading and trying to understand what other people have said and then presenting my understanding of this information in the form of a blog. i.e. I seem to be just rehashing the knowledge that already exists in the network rather than creating new knowledge. Yes, I’ve made the network larger (I am a new node), but is this learning process really connectivism if I haven’t created any new knowledge?

Also, if ten people rehash the same piece of information and present this information in ten new places, does this just make it more confusing for other learners?